Much Given, Much to Give: Jumping Mouse: A Native American Legend of Friendship and Sacrifice by Misty Schroe

Long, long ago, there was a mouse.

She had heard a story the old ones told about somewhere, the High Places, where life was good.

So all alone she went to find the High Places.

But how could a mouse, the smallest of the small, hope to reach the high place, far above her desert home? She soon reaches a stream too wide to cross. Lamenting, she hears a low voice.

"I am Grandfather Frog . Your journey will be long and hard, but because of your great longing, I will give you a gift to help you. Close your eyes."

And when Jumping Mouse opens her eyes, she has long, long, jumping legs. She leaps over the water and quickly crosses the wide grassy plain at the foot of the high mountain. After a while she meets with a blind buffalo, unable to find his way, and thinking of Grandfather Frog's gift to her, she offers him her eyesight. Buffalo rises and carries her on his back as far as he can go to the foot of the mountain. Smelling the cool mountain air ahead, Mouse follows her nose until she stumbles upon a sad wolf.

"I have lost my sense of smell," said the wolf. "Without my nose I cannot hunt. I will die."

Kind Mouse gives the wolf her sense of smell and she agrees to carry Mouse up the mountain to the tree line. There Wolf must go no higher, and Jumping Mouse is left with only the touch of her feet on the rough rock of the peak. She has given away too much to make it to the High Places.

And then she hears the voice of Grandfather Frog once more.

"Jump! As high as you can."

And Jumping Mouse leaps and is transformed, in Misty Schroe's reshaping of this Native American legend, The Story of Jumping Mouse celebrating personal sacrifice and gratitude, and illustrating the sense of the saying, To whom much is given, much is required. Mouse's transfiguration as an eagle both fulfills her hopes and rewards her self-sacrifice as such fables should. This powerful story was due a retelling, since John Steptoe's 1985 Caldecott Honor-winning version is now available only in paperback. Author-artist Schloe's work is strikingly illustrated with her clay animal sculptures overlaid on color photographs of the western landscape in a setting fitted to the origins of the story itself.